A Thought From Margaret Byrd Rawson

“To know and be part of his world is every child’s birthright. To experience the sights, the sounds, the feel and the smell and the taste of it-city and country, in all seasons and weathers; to watch and feel kinship with animals and plants and their life cycles and to participate in them; to be intimately acquainted with rocks and streams, soil, and sea, forest and lake-all are as important as to know his fellow man. To be aware in the present, to know of the past and how things and life came to be, to dream of the future as he may experience it and as it may be beyond his time are his predominantly human privilege. Not only to be and to grow, but to make and do, to try himself against reality, to bend it to his will or to merge himself with its forces as seems good and possible to him; to find purpose in his world and himself, stalwart courage to meet what comes; resourceful skills in coping with life’s challenges; to have a basic sense of inner security which gives due realization to danger and evil, but which knows that, however biting the winds of adversity, he can deal with them with a spirit not broken but victoriously strengthened and enlarged; to relate warmly and empathetically to people, both taking and giving-sharing life positively with them in small ways and large; understanding, accepting, and welcoming diversity and coming to terms with it as constructively as lies within his powers, knowing its hazards and using well its positive potential-these he needs if he is to be a fully functioning, ever-growing human person. These are the proper heritage of every human child.”

-Margaret Byrd Rawson, The Many Faces of Dyslexia, pgs. 57-58.

Famous Dyslexics

“The future can be bright; dyslexics do and can succeed.”

-Margaret Byrd Rawson

· Agatha Christie, English mystery writer

· Tom Cruise, actor

· Whoopi Goldberg, actress

· Walt Disney, founder of Disneyland, cartoonist

· Charles Schwab, founder of the investment brokerage firm

· Thomas Edison, inventor

· Winston Churchill, former prime minister of Britain

· Leonardo Da Vinci, Renaissance artist

· Harrison Ford, actor

· Jay Leno, comedian

· Robin Williams, actor and comedian

· Albert Einstein, scientist

· Nolan Ryan, athlete

· Harry Belafonte, singer, entertainer

· Cher, entertainer, actress

· Danny Glover, actor

· Gustave Flaubert, writer

· William Hewlett, co-founder, Hewlett-Packard

· Andy Warhol, artist

· John Lennon, musician

· Ted Turner, media mogul, philanthropist

· George Burns, actor, comedian

· Alexander Graham Bell, inventor

· Bruce Jenner, Olympian athlete

· George Patton, U.S. general

· Tom Smothers, comedian

· Henry Winkler, actor

· Billy Bob Thornton, actor

· Nelson Rockefeller, former governor of New York

· Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. president

· William Yeats, poet

· Hans Christian Anderson, author

Reading Is Not A Natural Process

The development of reading skills obviously serves as the gateway to the world of printed information. Most, if not all, of the informal education that we received is accomplished without the use of printed material. Historically, the oral tradition was the foundation of the informal education process and continues to remain so. However, through the development of reading skills, we prepare ourselves for our journey toward learning the material that must be mastered during the formal education process.

Many proponents of ‘whole language’ feel that, since humans learn to speak their native language through immersion, the act of reading follows a similar pattern and exposure to the printed word leads to the development of reading skills. This reasoning bears a false truth value. A great deal of care and attention to detail must accompany reading instruction because reading is quite different from speech.

In speech, the listener is provided with many clues as to the meaning of the words presented by the speaker. Intonation, pitch, cadence, and body language all provide context clues that assist in the comprehension of auditory signals. Further, according to the Innateness Hypothesis, children are equipped with a blueprint for the innate principles and properties that pertain to the grammars of all spoken human language called universal grammar. This blueprint aids the child in the task of constructing a grammar for the native language. Structure dependency of the native language and coordinate structure constraint are inherent. The rules of grammar that are language specific are learned from the surrounding linguistic environment through stages in oral communication presenting speech as a natural process.

Reading involves a quite different process. The two key components of reading, which do not manifest themselves in speech, are word identification and concept imagery. Word identification involves recognizing that words are a systematic string of individual graphemes (letters). Each individual sequential combination represents a different word. Students must be able to string together the individual phonemes (sounds) to produce these words. This is the essence of decoding. The other half of the reading puzzle involves comprehension of the meanings behind the sequential combinations of letters (words). Concept imagery allows students to visualize the item or process represented by the words. Students who have weak word attack skills (word identification) will stumble and stammer as they attempt to read the printed language. Those weak in concept imagery (comprehension) may read with prosody but will not understand what was read.

To understand the impact of word identification and concept imagery on the reading process, one merely needs to understand that the printed language is a code for spoken language. In order to read, a student must be able to translate the written symbol to the corresponding sound that it represents. This knowledge is called sound-symbol correspondence. The ability to make this translation is called phonemic awareness. Reading, or decoding, involves sound-symbol correspondence and phonemic awareness, neither of which is a naturally occurring process.

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and visually image the number, order, and identity of sounds and letters within words. These abilities underlie accurate word attack, word recognition, reading fluency, and spelling. Prior to learning to read, it is necessary for a child to understand that words are composed of strings of speech sounds called phonemes. Children who have phonemic awareness skills are likely to have an easier time learning to read and spell than children who have few or none of these skills. Weakness in these functions causes individuals to add, omit, substitute, and reverse sounds and letters within words while reading and spelling.

What Are Phonemes and Graphemes?

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word. For example, the word, at, has two sounds or phonemes, / ă / / t /. The word, dog, has three phonemes, / d / / ŏ / / g /. The word, box, has four phonemes, / b / / ŏ / / k / / s /. As evidenced by the word, box, phonemes are completely separate entities from the symbols that we call letters of the alphabet, or graphemes. A grapheme is the smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word. A grapheme may be just one letter, such as “t” or “d” or several letters, such as “aw” or “eigh”. Graphemes represent the phonemes in written language.